Official Statistics

Journey Times Statistics user engagement exercise summary of responses

Published 27 March 2025

Applies to England

DfT previously ran a user engagement exercise in which it sought to establish whether there was a suitable business case for continuing to publish the Journey Time Statistics (JTS) series, in light of DfT’s newly developed Model of Connectivity, and set out that it planned to discontinue the series if such a business case could not be established.

User were invited to provide their views on this proposal, via a survey which ran from July 2023 to November 2024 (16 months). We received 7 responses covering a range of stakeholder organisations and individuals, including academics, consultancy firms and local authorities.

The questions asked and a summary of the feedback received to each is given below:

Question 1: Please give us a brief description of the way in which you use the Journey Times statistics series.

Responses included using JTS as either directly or indirectly (through feeding data into their own models) to inform analysis, understand proximity and users access to local services.

Question 2: Do you feel the Connectivity Model will broadly meet that need or close to it?

Responses to this question were mixed. Most people responded that it would either meet their needs or they were unsure. When asked to provide comments to expand on their response, people elaborated that this was down to uncertainty over what the Model of Connectivity would provide.

Question 3: Noting obligations upon DfT arising from the Code of Practice for Statistics relating to:

• Keeping up to date with developments that can improve statistics;
• Considering the added value of potential improvements and their likely impact (including in relation to comparability and coherence);
• The limitations of the current methodologies in relation to the long lag in production for Journey Times statistics;

Do you agree it is reasonable that the Department should no longer continue to produce Journey Times statistics?

All respondents choose “no” to this question.

Assessment of suitability for continuing JTS

In assessing whether there was a good business base for continuing production of JTS, the department has carefully reviewed the feedback of respondents as well our obligations against the Code of Practice for Statistics. This sets out a series of expectations that official statistics publications and organisations producing these statistics must adhere to. When considering the cessation of an official statistics product there are particular areas that must be considered which are: relevance to users, value, innovation and timeliness of releases.  Our considerations against each of these points are taken below in turn:

Relevance

Users were invited to express their opinions regarding the future of JTS via our user engagement exercise. While we acknowledge appetite from some users in response to this, to continue production, this must be considered against the low volume of respondents (seven), who engaged with the survey and the long period of time (16-months) that this exercise ran for. This low level of response demonstrates evidence of little widespread, sustained public interest in this release.

Moreover, outside the exercise, the volume of enquiries received by DfT, regarding the data or as to the date of the next publication has been relatively small, in comparison to other statistics series, since the data were last published in November 2021. This suggests that people have either been able to source alternative sources of information to fulfil their needs around this topic or the JTS data are not critical to the needs of a large group.

Of those who provided views, several were from local authorities. The Model of Connectivity team has engaged extensively with local authorities to understand and meet their needs as part of development, and have made the model available to them as part of private user testing. As such, their needs around data in this subject area will be captured as part of that process.

Value

While the Model of Connectivity is not an exact replacement for Journey Time Statistics it is highly similar in its aims. This raises risks around having 2 concurrent series, particularly if competing narratives on transport connectivity emerge. Furthermore, allocating stretched analytical resources on duplicative products does not represent value for money for users.

Timeliness

The Code states that Statistics should be released on a timely basis, yet it has been over 4 years since JTS was last published. The methods deployed in order to generate JTS are now outdated, and would require deployment of IT solutions that are no longer compliant with Government Digital Service best practice. The previous method took over one calendar year to produce a single annual release, so there is no expectation of being able to produce a timely release via the old method at this time.

Innovation

The methodology and technologies used to produce the Journey Time Statistics, though innovative when first employed, have since been surpassed and involve very lengthy processing times and a large amount of dedicated resource. These can no longer be considered efficient or innovative and the resource to resolve this would be intense and in competition with other statistics releases. Technology deployed via the Model of Connectivity is much more suitable for this task, upon which the department is already focusing its resource.

Conclusion

Having reviewed the responses to the user engagement exercise and considered these against our wider obligations under the Code of Practice for Statistics, the department has concluded that there is not a sufficient business case to continue production of Journey Times Statistics and removal of official statistics badging is appropriate. We are therefore undertaking work internally to complete this process.

The department is happy to receive user feedback on the above, which should be directed to: vehicles.stats@dft.gov.uk.

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